You have a few wrong notions about mining. While it technically will provide passive income, most do not sell their coins for fiat on a daily or even weekly basis like dollar cost averaging. You're going to have to work to try to try to sell in hot bull markets (like today) and hold during bull runs which might last months or even years. So this added complexity won't really allow you to focus more on your education unless it's a psychological stress relief knowing you're invested into something with a strong future.

If you have a PC and a decent power supply, just buy a RTX 3xxx series card and mine Ether with just 1 card to understand the mechanics of the game. 3090s run $2500 or so before taxes and just 1 card removes complexity of having issues running many card or having to tweak clocks with AMD cards. If you decide you can commit more time and money after learning about wallets, pools, transactions, private keys, and so forth then jump in.

If you want a no headache way of investing, buy 1.25 ETH right now and sit on it for a decade.